It’s the summer of Nolan. Inception rules the box office. It’s a blockbuster, for sure. But it’s nothing like what we have come to expect from traditional Hollywood summer fare.

I admit that I was overwhelmed, and my review is here.

Having thought about the film some more, I want to suggest that it’s got three traits that are worth pondering, and that illuminate problematic areas in much blockbuster screenwriting:

1 – Concept and consequence.
The world that Nolan creates in the film… The basic premise of the plot within this world, or rather worlds… There is so much setting up, and there is a seemingly endless potential for expansion. Indeed, the first hour of the film is dense with dialogue and set-ups, which need to be satisfactorily payed off in the second half of the film. Nolan elegantly by-passes stereotypical Hollywood storytelling in this area.

I’ve seen some comments here and there by people who were underwhelmed by the action sequences. But for me, the ultimate trick of the film is the expanding time frames in consecutive dream-worlds, and the way Nolan masterfully ties this concept to the very-slowly-falling van that drives off the bridge. The way time almost grinds to a halt here, at least in one layer of the story, and then the shock as the characters are plunged back into reality… I gasped more than once.

2 – Leaving the device alone.
The technology that enables the characters to travel between worlds is never properly explained. Thank God! It’s a given in the film’s story universe that all the characters are already familiar with it. Some will say this is chickening out from explaining the impossible. I would say that’s exactly the point, and Nolan is smart enough to understand that his audience would not accept any attempt at explanation, and trusts us enough to leave it alone and get on with the story.

3 – Character ambiguity.
A key point in the film. There is no real hero in Inception. DiCaprio’s character is a deeply flawed and often unsympathetic man. Nolan makes the best use of DiCaprio that I’ve seen in a long time. But added to this, Inception also lacks a villain. Ken Watanabe could be seen as the antagonist of the piece, but this assumption quickly falls apart. Thus, the film becomes something much more interesting than your common blockbuster, and provides a roller-coaster ride that is also deeply intelligent and emotionally complex.

The counter-point exists with Marion Cottilard’s very one-dimensional character. Which ties in perfectly with the intellectual concept of memories and dreams as the film unfolds.

I still think that Christopher Nolan is one of the three or four most interesting American filmmakers working today. David Fincher and Darren Aronofsky are others. And I still root for M. Night Shyamalan, although I have yet to see The Last Airbender…

Tim Burton´s take on Alice in Wonderland has of course been out for quite some time now. The reason I haven´t seen it until now is mainly that I´ve fallen off the Tim Burton train. He has done some unique and brilliant things in the past. Big Fish in particular was a high point for me, and I have fond memories of watching that movie with my late mother. But his later works are increasingly anemic and passionless. I´m afraid Burton has lost his edge, or perhaps his love of genuine storytelling.

This is painfully evident in Alice in Wonderland. From the first frames it´s clear that Burton is merely painting by numbers. The characters are bland cardboard cut-outs, flat and lifeless. Burton constantly underestimates his audience: witness the casting and characterization of Hamish, Alice´s husband-to-be. The movie is trying to hit us over the head with the message “Hamish is a dreadful bore, and Alice shouldn´t marry him!” But in the end it all just comes across as bad storytelling.

So what´s going to be Burton´s next project? Perhaps an adaptation of Winnie-the-Pooh, where Christopher Robin returns as a grown up, and goes into an epic battle with sword in hand to defend the Hundred Acre Wood? Or Pippi Longstockings, where grown up Pippi has been diagnosed as psychotic, and insitutionalized for 15 years, before she finally breaks out and reclaims her villa in an epic battle with sword in hand?

Count me out from now on. I´m not interested.

When scriptwriting will allow it I also write for a website called Planet Origo, where I review movies and try to contribute articles in the pop-science genre. So far I’ve focused on the concept of film style in a number of different ways, and all the articles can be found here.

Planet Origo is dedicated to science fiction and fantasy, and later in the year we’ll get started on a feature series about the “other” sci-fi milestones, meaning those you don’t always find on the Top 10 list.

How many times have we seen scenes like this? Disaster movies are sure to have at least one “you need to see this” – some have close to a dozen. Is it just a harmless cliche? Or is it a sign of something worse: screenwriting advice mutated into dogma?

One of the first commandments of screenwriting goes “Show, Don’t Tell!” To be sure, that’s good, sound advice. Film is audiovisual storytelling, so your writing should be all about what can be seen and heard. But all advice must be combined with conscious thought. Otherwise you end up with insanely annoying characters that are incapable of telling each other anything. And all they can say is “I think you need to see this.”

Disaster movies are all about the spectacle. We don’t want to hear about the explosions. We need to see them. That doesn’t mean that every disaser movie has to be strictly formulaic in every scene. Sometimes a young officer can actually just tell the Colonel what’s up. It’s not always: Volcanoes = good, dialogue = bad.

An unthinking attitude to show, don’t tell, may lead to some problems:

1. Fragmentation. All scenes get steeped in spectacle, so the story ends up getting “loud”. May lead to your movie ending up as a string of explosive pearls.
2. Fear of dialogue.
3. Fear of monologue.
4. Characters behaving like cogwheels in a screenwriting machine.
5. Avoiding getting close to characters, and giving them depth.
6. Fear of ambiguity (what really happened?)

Keeping all this in mind, I still consider show, don’t tell, one of the best pieces of screenwriting advice you can get. You just have to remember that it’s not dogma to be followed blindly.

And that sometimes it’s really okay to tell, and don’t show.

The two most important attributes for a film critic are knowledge and passion. Pål Bang-Hansen is possibly the greatest film critic Norway ever fostered, and a perfect example of both. Now he has passed away.

Our local cinema centers are finally going completely digital. The work to convert every single one of the theaters in Trondheim starts in March, and about half of them will be fitted for 3D projection as well.

I’m thrilled! Let’s keep the cinema clubs for celluloid, nostalgia and the old indie vibe. Let’s leap into the digital age with our commercial cinemas. With Avatar pointing to the ideal future of cinema technology, the digital projection (2D and 3D) is what people will be happy to pay for.

I saw The Road the other day. The film itself left much to be desired, and the celluloid print was a joke. Patchy and uneven colours, a less than satisfying sound reproduction (although that might be down to the terrible score…), in a theater perfectly capable of flawless digital projections.

A decade ago people ridiculed George Lucas for filming Star Wars on digital cameras. I liked his reply: When people ask me if the time is right for this, I say we should have been doing it 20 years ago.

Amen. Let’s go!

Just when we had all chipped in on the best movies of the past decade, someone thought it would be fun to dwell a little on the worst movies EVER. Empire Magazine got their readers to vote. What do you think?

The time couldn’t possibly be more right for Oliver Stone’s sequel to the classic Wall Street. Check it out: Money Never Sleeps